After so very, very many false starts, the latest incarnation of decaffeinated dot org appears to be pretty–much–done. I played with the style sheets and site structure a great deal tonight, trying to achieve the design I had roughed out in Photoshop so very long ago… to no avail. Design of any order is about compromises, and web design is no exception. While the final product might not be a complete duplicate of my Photoshop draftings, I’m quite happy with it. Compromise.
Dealing with browser inconsistencies, dealing with the shortcomings of the language itself, and dealing with our own egos creates enough room for some major design adjustments. Yes, the world’s most popular browser has highly–deficient standards support. No, XHTML and CSS are not perfect, by any means. Yes, we do hope that in time they’ll get close.
There are still changes to come, still pages to add, still journal entries to write. But for now, welcome to decaffeinated dot org “orange”. If it all looks totally nuts to you (ie– it looks like the web circa 1992) you might be one of those visitors with old cookies — that can be remedied with a little orange goodness, or you could just delete the old cookie from your browser. As usual, this site validates XHTML 1.1 and CSS. It’s been tested (and looks great) in Gecko browsers, Safari, Opera and IE5/Mac. Windows browser testing will happen some time today, since it’d be rude to wake Garth up right now just to test IE6/Win.
And now I need to pop some No–Doz. That, or go to bed.
Posted by Chris Clark on May 26, 2003 at 7:19 AM
Ahh, the marvels of an impermanent medium. I can make as many changes as I please and it makes no difference at all to the cost, distribution, or release date of the product. Refresh, if you please. Like the succulent, citrine background image; the masthead is now a static element. Scroll all you like, it’ll stay right there. Just a whim, really.
Unfortunately (for some), in order to make that effect look any good I’ve had to employ the use of PNG images. For the majority of web browsers, this is no problem; they natively support this almost–a–decade–old graphics format and we all benefit from the smaller file size and superior transparency. Huzzah. For the majority of web surfers, though, this presents a problem. Internet Explorer for Windows does not natively support this graphics format, as the indominatable Jeffrey Zeldman mentioned last week, and we all know how much you all love Internet Explorer.
As I am yet to test the site on IE/Win, I don’t have an exact idea of how this affects the look of the site. I assume it isn’t a major problem, so this is one opportunity I shall take to flip the bird to IE/Win and its millions of users. If it really bothers you, I suggest you get a better browser and sign the petition while you’re at it.
Posted by Chris Clark on May 26, 2003 at 9:52 AM
With Apple WebCore (KHTML) quickly gaining on Gecko in the standards–compliance department, you have to wonder how quickly new WebCore browsers will pop up once the WebKit API is officially released. Gecko’s many children, wonderful and varied as they are, suffer from tremendous code bloat and have some serious performance issues. My own favorite browser, Camino, often lags on something as simple as scrolling down a page — or rendering cached pages.
If Safari is any indicator, the code is not only faster but lighter; one of the likeliest reasons for Safari’s high adoption rate (that, and unbridled fanboyism towards Apple in general… but that’s to be expected). The reason many aesthetics nerds and/or interface nerds don’t use Safari is, quite simply, it’s ugly. Never mind Apple’s (serial) abuse of the HIG, it’s just plan ugly. We’ve all heard that the Omni Group is adopting WebCore for future versions of OmniWeb, which looks very promising, but who’s going to make the Camino of WebCore? Who’s going to tackle it all with Cocoa widgets? Who’s going to make a WebCore browser that looks like it belongs on OS X? (sans brushed metal windows, thank you very much). Who indeed. Only time will tell.
Posted by Chris Clark on May 26, 2003 at 1:36 PM